Northern Ireland’s productivity ranking rises in UK but actual growth stalls – says Queen's study

Northern Ireland has risen to 8th place among the UK’s 12 regions in the latest annual Productivity Dashboard from the Northern Ireland Productivity Forum at Queen’s Business School, despite its productivity level remaining unchanged at £40 per hour worked in both 2022 and 2023.

Northern Ireland’s relative improvement therefore reflects other regions falling behind, with Northern Ireland’s productivity growth having stalled. 

The findings are detailed in the ‘Northern Ireland Productivity Dashboard 2025’, which shows how Northern Ireland performs in comparison to the rest of the UK’s regions. This is the fourth edition of the Dashboard, having first been published in 2022.

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The 2025 Dashboard was created by Ruth Donaldson, Dr David Jordan, Seán McDonald, and Professor John Turner on behalf of the Northern Ireland Productivity Forum, based at Queen’s Business School. The Forum is part of The Productivity Institute, a UK-wide organisation that works across academia, business and policy to better understand, measure and enable productivity across the UK. It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. 

To understand the causes behind this stagnation, the Dashboard measures Northern Ireland’s performance across 20 key drivers of long-run productivity growth. The 2025 Dashboard shows significant challenges with 13 of the 20 drivers falling below the UK average, with only four better, and the remaining three either equal to the UK average, or below average but above the UK median.

Key findings:

• 8 productivity drivers have continued to lag the UK average since the first publication of the Dashboard in 2022, revealing deep-seated barriers to long-run productivity growth.
• Northern Ireland has seen 11 of the productivity drivers improve in the short-term, and 11 improve in the long-term, representing the most number of improvements in absolute performance since the first Dashboard.
• Northern Ireland has the highest rate of low or no qualifications in the UK, with 10.7% of adults aged 16–64 lacking these skills, compared with the UK average of 6.9%.
• For those in the working age population (aged 16-64), 26.5% were economically inactive in Northern Ireland, compared to only 21.1% for the UK average.
• 55% of adults in Northern Ireland participated in lifelong learning in the last three years, the second-highest rate in the UK and above the 52% UK average.
• 34% of Northern Ireland SMEs cite political uncertainty as a major obstacle, the highest rate in the UK, and above the UK average of 26%.
• Northern Ireland leads the UK in gigabit broadband, with 94% coverage, the highest of all UK regions.
• Northern Ireland has only 36 public EV chargers per 100,000 people, compared with a UK average of 121 - less than half the next lowest region.
• Northern Ireland has the lowest management practices score in the UK, at 0.52 out of 1, below the UK average of 0.55.

Speaking about the report, Dr David Jordan from Queen’s Business School said: “Improving Northern Ireland’s productivity is a key objective for both the Department for the Economy and the Northern Ireland Executive. Raising productivity means more competitive businesses, higher wages, and more money available to invest in public services. Our Dashboard shows the key areas that policy needs to focus on to support Northern Ireland’s productivity growth over the long run.”

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Productivity underperformance is spread across several areas, many of which are interconnected. The Northern Ireland Productivity Forum’s recent report, NI Productivity 2040: Addressing Northern Ireland’s productivity gap for greater prosperity, demonstrates the importance of joined-up policy across government for tackling Northern Ireland’s productivity challenge.

Professor John Turner from Queen’s Business School added: “Northern Ireland’s productivity gap is a deep-seated problem.  It is also a problem that is not easy to fix. Addressing it, however, needs to be the number one priority for the Northern Ireland Executive if it wants the country to enjoy a prosperous future.”

The 2025 Northern Ireland Productivity Dashboard is available here: https://www.productivity.ac.uk/research/northern-ireland-productivity-dashboard-2025 

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